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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Rockies catcher Eliezer Alfonzo became the first player to receive a 100-game suspension for a second positive test under Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, the Commissioner’s Office announced Wednesday.

Alfonzo, 32, was suspended for 50 games on April 30, 2008, while a member of the Giants. At the time of that suspension, Alfonzo said he did not knowingly take a performance-enhancing substance, but took medicine for bronchitis in his native Venezuela.

Neukom’s own falling-out with the Giants’ executive committee, say the baseball sources, began over how to spend the additional millions that flowed into team coffers following the World Series championship. For example, one source says that beginning last October, the Giants’ merchandising revenue alone has increased by $1.5 million to $2 million per month over previous years. Ticket sales also boomed. The Giants have effectively sold out every game this season.

Confucius called a man aged 30 to be in “time for independence in study.” If pro baseball, which marked its 30th anniversary this year, were humans, it would be time to establish the base for independence in study.

At this juncture, the league ushered in the era of six million fans for the first time.

A cumulative 5,996,278 people went to baseball stadiums this season through Monday, just 3,722 shy of six million but the mark was expected to be set Tuesday.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

“Billy [Beane] called me and said Keith Law had sent him his review. I looked at it and I thought, What’s he talking about?” Lewis told Moviefone earlier on Wednesday. “It’s very weird that he’s on this. He’s intellectually dishonest, and I don’t know to what purpose.”

In his review, Law comes down hard on what the film cites as “Bill James bullsh-t” (James was the father of sabermetrics, the statical engine that drove Beane during ...

Damn…just as I’ve been working on Dotel: The Meaning Of 400 Blows Saves.

I don’t think so. I really do think baseball has been dramatically altered by a statistic invented by a perturbed sportswriter. Let’s end this thing with one more thought about Rivera. He is the best relief pitcher who ever lived. But he’s also a failed starter. Baseball is such a fickle game. When I think of Rivera setting the save record, I think about how PERFECTLY he fits his era, his space, his team, his role. ...

As hellodes points out…“Imagine these guys snapping at your heels, their hot breath on your necks.”

It’s hard to add any words to explain this, as the Rays had their rookies (and a few others who hadn’t spent a full year in the majors such as Sam Fuld) get dressed up in costumes for today’s trip to Baltimore. From the left, that’s Brandon Guyer, Jose Lobaton, Cesar Ramos, Russ Canzler, Jeremy Hellickson, asst. trainer Mark Vinson, advance scout Mike Calitri, Sam Fuld, Desmond Jennings, ...

Roy Halladay pitched his 20th career shutout and the Philadelphia Phillies became the first team to reach the playoffs this season with a 1-0 victory over the Houston Astros on Wednesday.

The NL East leaders clinched at least a wild-card berth and will appear in the postseason for the fifth straight year.
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The Phillies said this week there would be no champagne celebration for wrapping up the wild card, and when Halladay finished off Houston he and his teammates barely cracked a smile… ...

When Avila was asked about it after the game, he had no idea what media members were talking about. Avila said he never saw the sparks, which shot in several directions as a foul ball slammed into his mask…

It is unclear whether the ball hitting the mask or the ball forcing two parts of the mask to rub caused the sparks to fly.

Leskanic, 44, who lives on Alaqua Drive in west Seminole County, had a blood-alcohol level of .331, more than four times the legal limit of .08, according to an arrest affidavit. The level was so high that he had to be checked out at a hospital before being booked into the Seminole County Jail.

.331 is higher than his career worst BABIP! Also:

He was found passed out at the wheel of his pickup truck on State Road 436 at Ronald Regan Boulevard with his 5-year-old daughter asleep, and ...

A few weeks ago we told you there was Buzz that organizers of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa are planning to hold the big, opening media party at Tropicana Field.

Today the news is confirmed by—the Tampa Bay Rays’ 2012 schedule— which includes a rare Sunday off day on Aug. 26—to accomodate a Republican National Convention event. Our colleague Marc Topkin broke the news on The Heater blog.

The No. 1 takeaway from the schedule release, from my perspective, is that it ends on Oct. 3, with an intent again on wrapping up postseason play before the calendar flips to November. But it’s going to take either a five-game World Series or further condensing of the postseason schedule to make that intent a reality.

Thanks to the elimination of some unnecessary off-days, this season’s postseason schedule, which begins on Friday, Sept. 30, can last up to four weeks total, if the World Series ...

The Baseball World Cup, the second most prestigious tournament in international baseball competition, will be later this year in Panama. Some (at least preliminary) rosters are starting to be released.

Japan’s is made up of players from the Industrial and College leagues. NPB players generally only play in the WBC, (formerly) the Olympics, and maybe the Asian Games.

Australia’s includes former big leaguers, and all of the roster has at least some professional experience, either in North ...

The glass case in the lobby of the Toronto Blue Jays’ executive office holds World Series trophies from 1992 and 1993. Between them is a small stand, just a few inches high, with a $1 coin. Cito Gaston, the manager of those teams, gave the coin to the receptionist for good luck when he retired two years ago. She displays it as a placeholder for the next trophy, because the coin is dated 1993.

Oh, for those days at the SkyDome, when every night was a party. The Blue Jays averaged more than ...

I’m sorta reminded of the time Effin’ Stink Lad (non-LOSH) cruised a dump on D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage because he was too close to the action.

Moneyball, the movie, is an absolute mess of a film, the type of muddled end product you’d expect from a project that took several years and went through multiple writers and directors. Even good performances by a cast of big names and some clever makeup work couldn’t save this movie, and if I hadnt been planning to review it, I would have walked ...

Bo Jackson will no doubt remember his first major-league home run. The way he hit it, others will remember it, too.

“That ball was hit well over 500 feet,” said Royals interim manager Mike Ferraro after Jackson’s prodigious homer Sunday triggered the Royals to a 10-3 victory over the Seattle Mariners. “I was in awe. It was simply amazing.”

Officials said that Jackson’s 475-foot drive high onto a grassy knoll in left-center field was the longest hit at Royals Stadium. ...Read More...

Yankees closer Mariano Rivera recorded his 600th save on Tuesday, preserving a 3-2 victory over the Mariners at Safeco Field and becoming just the second pitcher in history to reach that plateau.

Rivera joins Trevor Hoffman in the 600-save club as the 41-year-old right-hander inches closer to the all-time record. He needs just one more to tie Hoffman, who retired after last season.
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“It’s a good number. There’s only one guy that has that, and that’s Trevor,” Rivera said. “It’s a good number ...

Justin Verlander won his 11th straight start to lead the Tigers to a 5-0 victory over the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field on Tuesday, the club’s 11th straight win overall. The 11-game team winning streak is the longest for the Tigers since an identical run from Sept. 9-21, 1968, and lowered the Tigers’ magic number for clinching the division to four.

Verlander (23-5) became the first Tigers starter to win 11 straight starts since at least 1919, holding the White Sox scoreless in his seven ...

With one mighty swing of his bat at Turner Field on Tuesday night, McCann erased doubts concerning his health and once again proved capable of putting his team on his shoulders when necessary. His three-run, sixth-inning homer off Brad Hand sparked a sputtering offense and allowed the Braves to snap a four-game losing streak with a 7-1 win over the Marlins.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

I was discussing with my wildly worldly colleague Cathal Kelly, as we often do when we get together, the state of the global economy, of fashion, shoes, sports, the newspaper biz and the importance of good hygiene and social networking, when the topic of AL MVP arose.

Now, as regular readers know, I am a baseball traditionalist from way back, while Cathal is more of a VORP, WAR, WHIP, OPS guy. Thus it was no surprise to hear him preach confidently about how the ...

From awarding a player a base hit to the rise of sabermetrics, the evolution of statistics in Major League Baseball is the focus of Behind the Seams: The Stat Story, a special produced for MLB Network by MLB Productions, premiering Sunday, September 18 at 10:00 p.m. ET.

Behind the Seams: The Stat Story will feature statisticians and experts, including Elias Sports Bureau’s Steve Hirdt, MLB’s ...

The unmistakable crack of a Louisville Slugger rings out over the Danube, that bluest of European rivers, snaking east from here all the way to the Black Sea after splicing up Vienna and Budapest and Belgrade and Bucharest. On the other bank lies Regensburg, a town of 130,000 that was founded in A.D. 90 as a Roman fort on the very edge of civilization, where the empire ended and barbarian wilderness began. The city is situated in the heart of the southeastern German state of Bavaria, tucked up ...

Enjoy interactive question-and-answer session with the players, player-hosted trivia games, a lively story-telling session in which the players share candid revelations about some of the “characters” of the game. There are also pitching, hitting, and defense strategy clinics and a lively passenger pitching contest. The host and MC for all of the onboard activities on each cruise is former Yankee star Stan Bahnsen. At the finale of the cruise there is also a COMPLIMENTARY AUTOGRAPH ...

Like the stillness of a deep mountain lake under moonlight or the rustle of a breeze through treetops, there is a natural harmony to Mariano Rivera that is so quiet as to be easily missed. What distinguishes the great Rivera is as much the absence of features as it is what he possesses. Absence of effort, absence of ego, absence of extraneous motion, even absence of facial hair and the accoutrements of fending off fear used by the modern, highly-caffeinated, ...

Welcome to the Seamheads.com Negro Leagues Database, powered by The Baseball Gauge. We are creating the first comprehensive statistical encyclopedia of the great black baseball teams and leagues that operated behind the color line in the days of Jim Crow segregation. The database also collects a vast amount of biographical information about these players, much of it previously unpublished.

Among the injustices visited upon the ballplayers of the Negro leagues, the lack of a statistical record ...

As a hardcore baseball fan who paid close attention to Billy Beane and the A’s during the period portrayed in the film there were a lot of specifics that stood out as questionable, particularly in terms of the movie’s time lines and exaggerated portrayals of certain characters (although the book is guilty of the latter as well).

However, what the movie lacked in historical accuracy it made up for in witty dialogue, likable characters, and a surprising amount of ...